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When it comes to jobs, are you comparing apples to broccoli?

The oddity of comparing apples to broccoli may strike you as weird or blatantly absurd, but unfortunately most companies are doing exactly this when it comes to their jobs.

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On a regular basis I scan the popular job sites, to understand what employers are looking for; if my skills are still valid; the compensation trends for my skills and similar job titles; and finally if there’s anything better out there. I see a common theme every time I do this research that baffles me- the differences in what employers put on their job descriptions versus what they actually need versus what they want to pay for the job. Employers tend to constantly underestimate or take the hiring manager’s ‘literal’ requirements or even worse the last position description. We all know, having worked in jobs, that while jobs have inherent purposes, as people settle in jobs, they morph the jobs they are doing which quickly renders the job description and grade old. So why do companies still compare the metaphorical apples (jobs that they sell) to broccoli (jobs they’re actually hiring for)?

Most Cloud HR Systems need Job families or job architectures

In the past 6 years, every (HR) system(s) I have implemented for my clients has required job families or job architecture with consistent job titles to enable their talent systems to analyse recruitment, learning and development, talent pools, succession plans and so on. How many clients have had this ready to go – a sumtotal of 0! If you’re in HR that won’t surprise you at all. It will suffice to say they have all struggled with spreadsheets and mostly not managed to have job families defined quickly or easily or in collaboration with people (due to sensitive nature of this information).

What are companies doing about this?

Unfortunately not much or they outsource this responsibility to expensive consultants or bodies of knowledge. The ones that are doing something about it internally are mostly doing it on excel sheets. They manually rank jobs, determine grades by comparing job frameworks and by the time they are done, guess what the job has changed and there’s been no collaboration and quality check of the results! Their compensation bands (if they have them) are based on inconsistent job titles and flaky evaluations which lead to inaccurately assessing the value of the job. Candidates hired in such positions are collateral damage and are very likely to leave.

Do you know?

What is your turnover rate associated with poor compensation or inaccurate job description?

What if there was a simple(r) tool to evaluate jobs?

Yes there is!

gradar offers an advanced Job evaluation engine that helps you begin your journey in pay equity, avoiding voluntary turnover and provides you a platform to be consistent in job titles and job families, but MOST IMPORTANTLY assess the true value of your jobs. With a range of career paths-Individual Contributor, Project Management and Management it is easy to evaluate all types of jobs. And luckily there is no re-inventing the wheel, the system already aligns with other popular job evaluation frameworks like Hay, Mercer, AON/Hewitt, and Towers Watson.

The factors depend on the career path selected and vary in the number. The simple scales with detailed explanations make the user experience quick and easy.

As you are evaluating the job, you have the opportunity to flag factors for debate, write comments and re-visit or write comments where you cannot reach a unanimous decision.

The system automatically recommends the appropriate scale for factors like experience, cognitive abilities, etc. depending on your choice of the professional knowledge factor. This recommendation gives you a great starting point but you are free to select the scale outside of recommendations if you wish to do so.

Based on the demands of this generation jobs, the system also has relational factors like processes where you need to decide the impact the job has on processes and their complexity. This is a unique factor that assesses jobs based on the need for simple, complex or highly complex processes and allows user(s) to assess the appropriate level of the job.

My favourite bits

It is collaborative! Gather the right people around and evaluate your jobs

It is time-saving: no more mucking around in excel and trying to interpret complex grade data sets.

You can duplicate gradings for similar jobs across the organisation so it saves you time

You can view the history of each job grading and restore previous versions if required

You can cross-compare your evaluations by job-families, grades, etc.

And oh yes they’re already thinking global by making the system available in multiple languages!

It doesn’t have to cost (a lot)

With 3 simple options, one being freemium based, getting started with your job evaluation journey couldn’t be easier! Frankly, I wouldn’t buy anything without trying, so why not go freemium to test the waters? After all, justifying a system cost is much easier when you can show significant time savings in the process and by creating your job evaluations online you are already well on your way in proving it’s worth.

What are you waiting for? Know the value of your jobs and keep them consistent and current. These companies already have!